“I’m not surprised. No, I’m just kidding. It feels unbelievable,” Karl Alzner said. “We’re all extremely happy about it and very relieved that all the hard work and just us fighting against what everybody’s been saying about us, we came out on top.”

Said General Manager George McPhee: “We needed to win a series like this, this franchise needed it. Boston’s a fabulous organization….We played them as hard as we could. I don’t know how we did it, but it was nice to see that go in. We needed it.”

More to come on Thursday, but in the meantime, catch all of The Post’s coverage from the Capitals’ electrifying victory in Boston.

“For me personally, I thought I may have lost a little bit of the respect of my own teammates being on the outside so much,” Ward said. “I definitely do play for the respect of them. When you’re on the outside it’s a little tough.”

Those days, however, seemed so long ago as he spoke in a jubilant visitors’ dressing room at TD Garden. Ward suddenly was the Capitals’ hero.

Amid the nerves and the angst knowing one team would go home, he trudged nonchalantly around the TD Garden Wednesday, looking almost bored by it all. So unmoved by the moment, he could have been the Zamboni driver smoothing over a patch of ice instead of the coach of the road team playing a Game 7 on the home ice of the defending Stanley Cup champions.